Tolerance cannot be measured in terms of degrees of intolerance. I am essentially opposed to burning books even when they incite others to violence. But freedom is either an absolute or it is conditioned on not inciting others to violence. Anything else is rationalized bigotry.

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Monday, June 1, 2015

The Pope and the Palestinians

I am bewildered by the fuss created around Pope
Francis’s recognition of the State of Palestine. Vatican City is a sovereign, territorial
entity. It is an independent city-state and its head of government is the
Bishop of Rome, also known as the Pope. What makes the Vatican different from other states
is both its size (44 acres in area) and its designation as the current physical
location for the supreme religious authority of the world’s 1,200 million
Catholics.The Holy See is separate from
but also central to the Vatican city-state. It
is both administration and government – its political and diplomatic
infrastructure is based in Vatican
City and headed by the Pope.Crucially, what makes the Holy See different
from other sovereign entities is that it is the locus for ecclesiastic
authority and therefore, for worldwide followers of the Catholic Church.

Once this is understood it is possible to
appreciate that the Vatican
directs policy but also it is responsible for the way that the worldwide Church
is viewed by outsiders.The other side
is that it also shapes the way that 1.2 billion Catholics view the rest of
humanity.

I can summarize that recent history at least
through the following Papal profiles:

Pope Pius XII may or may not have intervened on
behalf of Jews and other groups that were persecuted to their deaths by the
Nazis during WW2 but what condemns him is his failure to make a loud and
consistent vocal objection to the policies of the Nazis.It is futile to now speculate about what may
have been; we can only understand the power of that central authority and
crucially, that it was not publicly exercised.That failure is a shameful, loathsome, wholly unforgivable ethical
silence.

There could never be an excuse for shutting out
the cries of the tortured and the murdered, no matter who they were.

Pope Paul VI pushed through Nostra Aetate in
late 1965. It passed by a vote of 2,221 bishops in favor of the declaration
and was opposed by 88 bishops. It repudiated
the charge of Jewish deicide; rejected an attitude of the Church that all Jews
were eternally damned and condemned antisemitism in all its guises. It
highlighted the bond that Catholic and Jew shared and it rejected Supersessionism,
the idea that one faith is made obsolescent by the creation of another.It was this theological justification that fueled
millennia of prejudice and persecution.There has been nothing similar in any of the
other churches (Eastern Orthodox or Protestant) that make up another billion
adherents of Christian faith and many of which, to this day believe in a toxic
and genocidal replacement theology.Nostra Aetate was followed in 1974 and 1985 by further guidance.After almost 1,900 years of Church
persecution all this was nothing short of a revolution.

Still, it was only in 1994 that Pope John
Paul II established diplomatic relations with Israel.Diplomatic relations was acknowledgment of
the legitimacy of Zionism as a right of Jewish expression. In 1903 Theodore
Herzl attempted to gain Papal support for the Jewish homeland from Pope Pius X
and was refused.In 2014 Pope Francis
visited Herzl’s grave.

The Islamic world understands the
Vatican
because it represents political interests projected through theological power.Most of the Catholic Churches adherents live
in countries with shaky democratic traditions where superstition and prejudice
are barely distinguishable from their understanding of the obligations required
by their faith. The power of the leader of the church to change attitudes is
limited to small, incremental changes adopted over long periods of time.

The papacy took a century to
recognize the legitimacy of Zionism. The prejudice of almost two millennia of
officially sanctioned church persecution won’t disappear overnight or even over
decades. It will take much longer.It
seems the State of Israel received nothing aside from Papal recognition while the
Catholic Church, with its vast Israeli real estate holdings apparently, now
pays no taxes on any of them.Expressing
gratitude for an end to being hounded, persecuted and murdered, it would be
difficult to eloquently understate just how perverse this idea of being
grateful for small mercies really is.

The State of Israel talked up the
benefits – it said that a tourism bonanza would follow on from the exchange of
treaties. After all, if, as a result of that treaty, Israel were to witness an
increase in Catholic tourism to “the Holy Land” of even a half of one-per cent
of all Catholics, that would represent a trebling of the record year for
inbound tourism to Israel.In fact, for
Israel
at least, there have been no discernible benefits.

Politically, there is no benefit
to be had for the Catholic Church to improve its ties with Israel. The
only benefit was the (enormous) financial benefit which Israel, it
seems, gave away for nothing tangible in exchange.Vatican
policies in this region can have no effect on the lives or safety of Christians
in the area but they can damage Christian interests by giving Muslims any
excuse to escalate their policy of ethnic cleansing against Christians.

Fear of a backlash against
Christian communities in lands with significant Muslim populations has created
an atmosphere of appeasement throughout the world.There are numerous examples of Christian
communities that have suffered significant persecution because of real or
imagined slights against the Muslim faith.

The whole purpose of diplomacy is
to represent, protect and where possible, to further, the interests of the
state in the conduct of their foreign relationships. Israel has been consistently out-maneuvered
throughout its diplomatic history because it has failed to view foreign policy
as worthy of investment in either people or funding, or, to view the practice
of statecraft as worthy of its long-term attention.

We could argue that befriending
Israel would tangibly benefit the Vatican by increasing its influence over
Israeli policy but the record of nations in international diplomacy is one of
short-sighted (not always lucrative) self-interest and policies pursued in the
interest of venal national prejudice and historical chauvinism.

Two events that caused
controversy in Israel
should not have done. Canonizing two nineteenth century nuns who lived in the
Holy Land is a reminder that Christianity may be physically erased from the
Muslim world but will be spiritually, eternally remembered, for as long as
there are Church followers.It was
tokenism.It was concerned with Arab
persecution of Christians in the Near East. Second, whether the Pope called President
Abbas a “Man of Peace” or not is irrelevant. All the newspapers carried the
initial reports that he did and those reports are all that are important.Any subsequent denials serve only to fill
space.Pope Francis helped President
Abbas to score points against his Hamas rivals in Gaza,
and diplomatically, in the media war against Israel.

We may appreciate the pontiffs comments
that “anyone who does not recognize the Jewish people and the State of Israel
and their right to exist is guilty of anti-Semitism” as reportedly made in
conversation with Portuguese-Israeli journalist Henrique Cymerman.But what counts is the public profile of
comments – what is prominently reported and what is ignored by the mainstream
press (because it does not help to support an antisemitic agenda).

Israel has been consistently
misrepresented and slandered over decades in the global press using precisely
this method of information dissemination. Pope Francis did not publicly
protest vicious persecution, torture and murder of Christians in Muslim lands;
he is unlikely to highlight Islamic antisemitism. Nor is he going to represent our side against
our enemies in his treatment of this international conflict.

2 comments:

It is those 1,200 million followers that concern me. Even if only a small percentage of followers listen to "his holiness" - that still represents a huge number of people. Do you know the "His Dark Materials" Book trilogy by Philip Pullman. The first film produced was also the last one produced. Apparently and despite its commercial success, the enterprise was viewed as anti-Catholic and anti-God by the church and as a result pressure was allegedly applied which ensured no further filming took place. Any one for control of the press?